A few days ago, our technical writing team went on a chocolate outing. This is not a rare occurrence. This time I have some pictures and a few musings about the confluence of teams and chocolate.

Concept:

Reference:

Task:

We decided that was one user guide we could all follow without difficulty!

chocolate.inspire(team)

For me, one of the most important aspects of my job is the team I work with. After all, I spend most of my waking life with them. It’s good to build up some common interests, other than the work itself, so that you have something to talk about, something to bind you together, even something to complain about.

I think fun is very important. But “fun” is a fuzzy concept. People have different ideas of what constitutes fun and technical writing teams typically consist of very disparate individuals. So how on earth do you find something that everyone will consider fun, interesting and invigorating?

Funnily enough (heh), we’ve found that it just happens. We have a great bunch of people in our team. Every one of us wants everyone else to feel good in the team. So when a possible “common interest” arises, everyone buys into it.

skate.go()

Earlier I wrote that it’s even good to have something to complain about together. Don’t we all love to exclaim in anguished tones, and isn’t it a good thing if the object of such gleeful anguish is not our job! I have a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon above my desk at work, showing Calvin’s father with a mangled bicycle, obviously the result of a bad stack. The caption reads something like:

“The secret to enjoying your job is to have a hobby that is even worse.”

Our technical writing team is keen on rollerblading. Actually, we’ve only done it once, but we plan to get out there again soon. And being keen doesn’t mean we do it well, just that we’re happy to give it a go. Or simply to watch our team mates fall off the blades! We made it into the Cherryleaf I’m a technical writer and I’m not boring annals.

But can you guess what the most popular common interest is? You got it: chocolate. And it’s not something we complain about!

chocolate.reward(jens)

We’ve taken to “rewarding” other people, those who are not fortunate enough to be technical writers, when they do something that improves the documentation. How do we reward them? With chocolate of course.

Our latest reward went to Jens, who is doing some awesome work on a “documentation” theme for Confluence wiki. (Yes, it’s true! I’ll let you know more about it when there’s a prototype ready for trial.)

We went to at Max Brenner in George Street, Sydney. Clockwise from the left, here are Rosie, Jens, Ed, Giles and Andrew (I was taking the photo):

Lucky Jens!

tShirt.glow()

Another thing we do to engender team spirit is to dress alike.

Heh, just kidding. But on this occasion, we all made sure that we wore our new Atlassian Dragon Quest T-shirts.

Warning! The shirts are very green. When we all appeared together, an involuntary gasp of horror escaped Penny, one of our QA engineers:

“My eyes, my eyes.”

So here we are, the Atlassian technical writers on a chocolate outing in our Dragon Quest T-shirts. Clockwise from the left — Ed, Giles, Andrew, Rosie and Sarah:

I count myself extremely lucky to be part of such a great team! Do you have any stories about what your team gets up to?

ダンスがメインの劇場、Sadler’s Wells Theatre（サドラーズ・ウェルズ劇場）で開催中のSvapnagata Festivalの演目、「Akram Khan & Nitin Sawhney: Confluence」を見た。友人が、一緒に見る予定だった人が突然来れなくなったというので、講演の前日に誘ってくれたのだ。前から数列目と言うとても良い席で、パフォーマンスを目の当たりにできた。

Svapnagata（サンスクリット語で「Dreaming（夢見ている）」の意） Festivalは、２週間に及ぶインド音楽とダンスのフェスティバル。Confluence（26〜28日）はそのトリを務める公演で、世界初演となる。Confluence（合流、群衆、集合）は、Zero Degrees（ゼロ度・2005年）やBahok（バホーク・2008年）でも共作した、バングラデシュ系イギリス人のダンサー／振付師であるAkram Khan（アクラム・カーン）とインド系イギリス人の作曲家・Nitin Sawhney（ニティン・ソーニー）がコラボ。彼らのルーツである南アジアの文化的・精神的影響を探る作品だ。

ゼロ度は、私たちの好きなイギリス人アーティスト・アントニー・ゴームリーが製作した人形を舞台で使っているというので、同じくサドラーズ・ウェルズで見たのだが、その時に、カーンのダンスに初めて出会った。Confluenceでも彼の魅力は充分生かされ、北インドの古典舞踊カタック（Kathak）の踊り手でもあるカーンの、しなやかで力強いダンス、流れるような手の動き、ぶれない高速旋回、そして足に鈴をつけて踊るカタックの見事なステップが、半透明のスクリーンに幽玄的にぼんやりと浮かび上がる、スクリーンの後ろで演奏するミュージシャンたちの奏でるソーニーの美しい音楽と見事にマッチしていて、観客を魅惑・熱狂させた。古典舞踊とコンテンポラリー・ダンス、そして伝統的音楽と現代音楽を融合させた、素晴らしいパフォーマンスだった。残念だったのは、1時間ちょっとという短い公演時間。もっと見たかった！

I went to see “Akram Khan & Nitin Sawhney: Confluence“, a part of Svapnagata (meaning ‘dreaming’ in Sanskrit) Festival, two-week festival of Indian music and dance, at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre which specialises in dance. My friend asked me to join her the day before, as she got a spare ticket because her friend couldn’t make it. She got great seats which were only few rows away from the stage and we could see the performance up close.

Confluence (Nov 26 to 28), which was the festival’s climaxes and its world premiere, is a joint creation by Bangladeshi-British dancer/choreographer Akram Khan and Indian British composer Nitin Sawhney, who also previously collaborated in Zero Degrees and Bahok. In Confluence, Khan and Sawhney explore their cultural and psychological mix of influences.

I went to see Zero Degrees at the Sadler’s Wells because British Artist Antony Gormley was also involved in the creation, and it was my first experience with Khan’s mesmerizing dance. Khan, also a dancer of Northern Indian classical dance Kathak, showed us his elastic but powerful dance, streaming hand movements, stable high-speed turns, and beautiful steps of Kathak and the sound of the bells worn around his ankles, and these perfectly matched with Sawhney’s beautiful music on its simple stage. The scenes that silhouettes of musicians who were playing behind the screen came to dimly appear through the thin screen was pretty mysterious. It was a stunning performance which mixed classical Indian dance / contemporary dance and traditional music / modern music, and excited the audiences. I wish the performance was a bit longer (it was only 1 hour and 15 min)!

photo: Morley von Sternburg

photo: Morley von Sternburg

Confluence user macros allow the passing of parameters using $param<x> where <x> is the name of the param.

For example, consider the user macro:

To implement this macro on a wiki page, the user would add:

{showimage:image=flowers}

to the wiki markup.

The behaviour you would expect would be the image to appear in the page, BUT the Confluence user macro doesn’t know where the $paramimage parameter ends.  It includes the full stop(.) and the jpg in the string and so never finds the image that is attached to the page.

Including a space between the $paramimage and the .jpg also means the image is broken.

One way to resolve this issue is to HTML encode the concatenated string, and then decode:

#set($jpg= $generalUtil.urlDecode(“%2E%6A%70%67″))

and then call both the parameters together:

Using both parmeters together

Atlassian Confluence user macros information

## Encode file extensions as Confluence struggles concatenating strings that start with a full stop.

#set($nrl= $generalUtil.urlDecode(“%2E%6E%72%6C”))
#set($jpg= $generalUtil.urlDecode(“%2E%6A%70%67″))

!$paramprofileresources$jpg!

Le nouveau quartier de la ville se dévoile peu à peu et s’annonce plus que prometteur!

Les premiers aménagement  des “docks lyonnais” ont ouvert aux alentours de la Sucrière. La Biennale d’Art Contemporain est un moyen de faire découvrir les nouveautés aux visiteurs.

Les berges ont été réaménagés, une première péniche propose son bar, le restaurant Le Bec et DoMo (photo) qui se revendique de gastronomie “franco-japonaise” sont ouverts. L’architecture intérieure de ce dernier est plus que novatrice pour Lyon!

L’architecture des bâtiments est à la fois audacieuse et moderne tout en s’intégrant plutôt bien aux alentours.

Nous verrons si le pari d’un nouveau “centre” pour Lyon sera réussi mais, pour l’heure, cela semble plus que bien parti!

This weekend, while in Addison, Pennsylvania, my friends and I drove to see the Youghiogheny River Dam right outside of Confluence, Pennsylvania. While the day was cloudy, we were still able to see the structure of the dam—rolled earth fill with impervious core. The dam was built in 1943 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as one of sixteen flood control projects in the Pittsburgh area. I was interested to learn that the dam is also important in helping dilute pollutants before they reach other rivers in the region by increased water movement. Here’s an aerial view of the dam:

Photo courtesy of: http://www.lrp.usace.army.mil/rec/lakes/youghiog.htm#stats

Here’s some photos from my trip:

If you’re interested in visiting the Youghiogheny River Lake & Dam there’s lots of outdoor activities in the area, such as swimming, camping, fising, hiking trails, boating and much more.

My article on “Using a wiki for technical documentation” appears in the October edition of Southern Communicator, the Australian and New Zealand journal of technical communication. Exciting!

A big thank you to Janet Taylor and the journal’s editorial team, both for inviting me to contribute and for allowing me to publish a PDF extract of the journal on this blog. Another big thank you to Marian Newell, who kindly gave permission for me to include her article here too. You guys are stars!

Click this link to download the PDF file containing the journal extract. Below is a summary of the content.

Using a wiki for technical documentation

My article is on pages 6-10 of the PDF file. (Printed page numbers are 4-8.) It covers the following topics:

• Overview — what a wiki is and does.
• Workflow — draft, review, publish.
• Tracking — page history, notification of updates, reverting to a previous version.
• Permissions.
• Adding structure to your documentation — table of contents, left-hand navigation bar, logical page ordering, content re-use.
• Release management.
• Agile development methodology.

(The article is based on my earlier presentation of the same name. You may find the slides and screenshots a useful adjunct to the printed article, since the images are rather small in the article.)

Trends in British technical communication

The journal’s editorial team allowed me choose another article from the journal to include in the PDF extract. I chose Marian Newell’s very interesting article, “Trends in British Technical Communication”. She discusses a number of topics, including:

• Our job titles — Are we technical writers, technical communicators, technical authors, content creators…? Personally, I prefer to be known as a technical writer. But read what Marian has to say.
• Deliverables and workplaces — printed or online content, large long-lasting projects or smaller shorter projects.
• Tools and methods.
• Generalisation and specialisation.
• Translation.
• Fads and fashions — user-generated content, social networks, information facilitators, modular content.
• Quality and productivity — Is “good enough” good enough? Should we obtain a standard qualification to put us on a par with other professions?
• Economic and commercial factors — global economic crisis, current demand, freelances and agencies, outsourcing, offshoring, remuneration, standards of written English.

And more

The PDF file also includes:

• The editor’s introduction by Sue Woolley.
• A foreword by Geoffrey Marnell about the recent ASTC and PLAIN conference, a joint event in Sydney organised by the ASTC and the Plain English movement

I took my dog for a walk … all the way from New York to Florida … I said to him, “There. Now you’re done.”

- Steven Wright

Fetch, Finn! Now sit, Sunny! Stay. Good pups!

That’s right, in a deliberate attempt to boost our Arbitron ratings Great River Radio has turned the show over to our dogs. Well, not the entire show. Our “Confluence” segment this week has a canine theme. We’ll have dog-related songs from Big Mama Thornton, Page France, Josh Ritter, Uncle Tupelo and Louis Armstrong. And as always we’ll mix in a few listener requests, including selections from Patty Griffin and John Hiatt. But despite their best efforts, Finn and Sunny won’t run the entire show.

There’s a Great River Radio tradition of digging through mountains of MP3s to bring you some of the best new music around. We’ve been working extra hard this week to unearth new tracks from Richmond Faintaine, The Avett Brothers, Brandi Carlile, Dirty Projectors, Tom Waits, Sharon Jones, Har Mar Superstar, Martha Wainwright, Girls, Echo & The Bunnymen and the Raveonettes. Haven’t heard of some of these artists? That’s OK. Give us a listen, and you might discover a new musician to add to your own heavy rotation.

Great River Radio will be “live” today from 4-6 p.m. (CST).

Brian/Dan

P.S. Great River Radio will be off next week for Thanksgiving. Give thanks and have a great holiday with family and friends!

Playlist

Maybe-Ingrid Michaelson
Crown of Ages-The Ettes
Ten Thousand Words-The Avett Brothers
Green Grass-Tom Waits
Stranded In Your Love-Sharon Jones and Lee Fields
So Hard-Martha Wainwrights
Lust For Life-Girls
8th Wonder-The Gossip
Tall Boy-Har Mar Superstore
Take It In-Hot Chip
Hound Dog-Big Mama Thornton
My Dog & Me-John Hiatt
I Wanna Be Your Dog-Uncle Tupelo
Dogs-Page France
Feed The Dog-Honey Is Cool
To The Dogs Or Whoever-Josh Ritter
Yellow Dog Blues-Louis Armstrong
Heavenly Day-Patty Griffin
I Will-Brandi Carlile
The Underdog-Spoon
The Preacher-Brother Ali
The Chosen One-The Raveonettes
I Think I Need It Too-Echo & The Bunnymen
Wild Girl-Rickie Lee Jones
Island, IS-Volcano Choir
Stillness Is The Move-Dirty Projectors

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My Thoughts Enclosed…Rb

A beta version of the next Confluence release is out. And guess what — it’s got gadgets. This is pretty cool, so I’m jumping the gun and telling you about it right now.

It’s still just a beta release: Confluence 3.1 Open Beta. The announcement is on the Atlassian News Blog, along with an invitation to try it out. So I got myself a copy and put some gadgets onto a wiki page.

Now, the gadgets I chose are perhaps not the most useful. The most usual business case would be to add gadgets published by other Atlassian applications. For example, you might want to add a gadget that displays some information from another Confluence site or from  JIRA, Bamboo, FishEye or Crucible. (Those are other applications developed by Atlassian, the company I work for.)

But for me, the fun bit is that I can add the gadget that I created and blogged about 8 months ago.

The same 2 gadgets in 3 different applications

Here’s a screenshot of a Confluence wiki page with two gadgets. One is mine, displaying an up-to-date list of recent blog posts about technical writing from WordPress.com. The other gadget was created by Donna, our support diva, showing recent entries in a Jive discussion forum. (Click the image to enlarge it.)

Gadgets on Confluence wiki pages - oh, and in JIRA and iGoogle

Here are the same two gadgets on my iGoogle page:

Gadgets on Confluence wiki pages - oh, and in JIRA and iGoogle

And here they are in JIRA:

Gadgets on Confluence wiki pages - oh, and in JIRA and iGoogle

How do you add a gadget to a Confluence page?

Your Confluence page can display two types of gadgets:

• Internal — These are gadgets published by the same Confluence site as where they are displayed. Typically such a gadget would display information sourced from the Confluence site, such as an activity stream or a search function.
• External — These are gadgets published by another Confluence site, or a JIRA site, or even something totally different like Remember the Milk, a hamster in a wheel or a pet monkey.

If your gadget is external, the Confluence administrator needs to add the gadget to the list of available gadgets before you can add it to your Confluence page. This needs to happen only once for each gadget.

To make an external gadget available in your Confluence site:

1. Log in as a Confluence administrator.
2. Go to ‘Confluence Admin‘ and click ‘External Gadgets‘ in the left-hand navigation panel.
3. Paste the URL of your gadget into the field labelled ‘Gadget Specification URL‘. The URL should point to the XML file that describes the gadget.

For example, take a look at the URLs for the two gadgets in my screenshots above. The URL for the WordPress gadget is:

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/117695765658379330528/
WordPress-dot-comRSSFeed.xml

And the URL for the Jive forums gadget is:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/download/attachments/203394872/forums.xml

Friendly warning: I’m just using my gadget as an example here. It’s a total hack, so please don’t insert it into any Confluence sites that matter! You’ll get all sorts of weird display problems, plus potential security issues too.

To add a gadget (external or internal) to a Confluence page:

1. Create a new page or edit an existing page.
2. Put your cursor in the edit box where you want the gadget displayed.
3. Click the ‘Insert/Edit Macro‘ icon  in the toolbar.
4. You’ll see the ‘Select Macro’ popup window. Enter some text into the search box at top right, to find the gadget you want.
   
5. Click the gadget you want. You’ll see a preview of the gadget. Most gadgets also offer you some options to configure the gadget, such as width of the display, background colour, etc.
   
6. Change the settings if you like, then click ‘Insert‘.
7. Save the Confluence page.

Extra authorisation step (OAuth)

Some gadgets require extra authorisation, to reassure the publishing server that it’s OK to send its data to the server where the gadget is displayed. Gadgets use an authorisation protocol called OAuth. There are two parts to the authorisation, one performed by the administrator and one by the person adding the gadget to or viewing the gadget on the page.

1. The administrator needs to set up the OAuth relationship between the gadget publishing server (called the provider) and the displaying server (called the consumer). This authorisation step needs to happen only once for each site. Once you’ve authorised one server to send information to another server, then you can add multiple gadgets from that server. For example, let’s say you want to display JIRA gadgets on a Confluence page. Your JIRA server needs to trust your Confluence server. So you’ll need to add Confluence as an OAuth consumer in JIRA. To do this, you will give JIRA the URL of your Confluence server. The instructions are in the JIRA documentation.
2. When you add a gadget to a page, you will need to authorise the display of information under the authority of your user ID. Similarly, every user who views the page will need to authorise the display of the information under their user ID.  The authorisation lasts for a while (a week or so, unless you revoke it). The gadget will display a ‘Log In and Approve‘ button. When you click the button, you will go to the login page of the site concerned. Log in and then approve the gadget’s access to the server’s information. Now you’ll see the gadget information displayed. There’s a full write-up in the Gadgets documentation.

Phew, I’m glad we’ve got that out of the way!

Would you like to try it yourself?

The Confluence 3.1 beta release is out, so you can hack away. If you’re very brave, you could even write your own gadget and put it on a Confluence page!

Don’t let us get sick
Don’t let us get old
Don’t let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight
- Warren Zevon

It is Social Justice Awareness Week again at KUST – the twice yearly opportunity for us to explore an issue of importance to our community, nation or world in the context of music. Great River Radio has decided to tackle the very current and very hot problem of health care reform – the topic that we hear about every day, from the extremist pundits and the self interests and the sincere reformers. It is a very personal issue – if we haven’t found ourselves sick and broken and in need of healing yet, our loved ones have, and it is inevitable that we will all interact with America’s huge and complex health care system at some point in our lives.

We want to take this opportunity to bring to GRR listeners some songs that came to mind (including many requests from our listeners) as we ponder the health care debate that is underway in this country this very day. We will supplement the music this afternoon with some readings and thoughts on the situation – one which is too often obscured by rhetorical excess, misinformation and outright lies. If you have (like we have) tried to sort out the accurate information from the politics, you may have just thrown up your hands in frustration.

Unfortunately, we can’t explain the intricacies of the bill which just passed the House, or what the Senate will do to it next. We can’t tell you how the doctor and hospital you go to price their services. We can’t explain what constitutes a “pre-existing condition” and why it isn’t covered by your insurance. But we can entertain you for two hours with music about health, healing, hospitals, illness and, finally, mercy. Tune in to Great River Radio this afternoon as we tackle health care reform in our own tiny way, and catch music by Panda Bear, Fountains of Wayne, Loudon Wainwright, Tom Waits, Annie Lennox, Conor Oberst, Ben Kweller, Ted Hawkins, The Band, Mary Gauthier, The Replacements and others – songs selected by Brian, Dan and YOU.

Next week we’ll return to regular programming at Great River Radio, bringing you a mix of the music we’ve been listening to lately. Our regular feature, Confluence, will concern our best friends: dogs. Let us know your favorite dog songs and maybe Brian and I will bring Sonny and Finn into the studio!

Playlist
Chest Fever-The Band
Rockin’ Pneumonia and th Boogie Woogie Flu-Dr. John
Sick Day-Fountains of Wayne
Hurt-Johnny Cash
Everybody Hurts-REM
Rattle My Bones-The Suburbs
Everything Is Broken-Bob Dylan
How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live-The Del Lords
Don’t Let Us Get Sick-Jill Sobule
Allergies-Paul Simon
Sorry You’re Sick-Ted Hawkins
Doctor Robert-The Beatles
Doctor Blind-Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton
Bitter Pill-Annie Lennox
The Healing Game-John Lee Hooker/Van Morrison
That Hospital-Loudon Wainwright III
Hospital Bed-Ben Kweller
Take Me Down To the Hospital-The Replacements
I Don’t Want to Die (In The Hospital)-Conor Oberst
When Water Comes To Life-Cloud Cult
Mercy Now-Mary Gauthier
Handle Me With Care-Travelling Wilburys

Confluence III – A Meeting By The Nile is, as the name partially suggests, an Indian-Egyptian fusion album and the next in the Confluence series of fusion albums centered around Rahul Sharma. The Egyptian part of the album comes from Georges Kazazian, player of an instrument called the Egyptian Oud, which sounds like a deeper Sarod and looks like this.

The first track, titled Marhaba Jaanam is actually a full-on pop song by Sunidhi Chauhan, with some vaguely Arabic sounds provided intermittently by Sharma and Kazazian. Sunidhi performs in a shrill voice that I didn’t quite know she had in her, and not always to the song’s advantage. Presumably, Marhaba Jaanam is meant to be the star track of the album – a representative of the fusion between the santoor and the oud. The problem is it sounds like a pop remix with too much percussion – which, to my annoyance, blocks out the gentler sounds of instruments like the santoor and the oud. The album then goes and overdoes it by including an Instrumental version and a Remix (!) version of Marhaba Jaanam.  Pyramids, Sunrise On The Sphinx and Nights in Cairo follow the same format – more emphasis on the percussion than on the fusion.

Listen to Marhaba Jaanam

Sheesha in the Jazz and Taj Mahal use less percussion than usual, and there is some breathing space given to the instruments. Unfortunately, it is also too slow to really appreciate the talents of the musicians or to stay with the song long enough to soak it in.

Listen to Taj Mahal

In my review of Confluence I and II, I noted that Confluence II went darker and more electronica than Confluence I. Despite losing Clayderman and adding on a classical player from across the ocean, the electronica-style fusion continues to take over in Confluence III to the point that it is difficult detect much genuine Egyptian-ness in the album as a whole.

To wash out that vague feeling of elevator music, I’d highly suggest listening to the piece below from when Rahul Sharma did fusion of the kind that you could rock to.

Listen to an edited version of Garhwal Himalayas from the album ‘Mountain Trail’

Don’t be afraid of the dark
don’t be afraid of the dark
I’ll be there to hold you
don’t be afraid of the dark

You might tremble
you might shake
scream out loud
maybe even pray

Don’t be afraid of the dark
don’t be afraid of the dark
I’ll be there to hold you
don’t be afraid of the dark

-  Robert Cray “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”

We’re guessing that you’ve had your fill of Halloween treats the last couple of days (well, one last Twix bar couldn’t hurt). But have you ever stopped to think about the allure of this peculiar holiday? The influences on this (mostly secular) day of celebration are many. And although Halloween’s popularity spikes in the United States, many other countries now join in the fun. For some individuals, the opportunity to play dress-up and reinvent themselves is too exciting to pass up. For others, an entire population masking who they are and reveling in anonymity can be a bit disturbing.

In past years, Great River Radio has used this occasion to dig into our shared library and play music with an emphasis on Saints, Souls and Goblins. This afternoon we’ll take a little different tack as we bring you music inspired by the things that raise the hair on our arms (or backs!). You’ll hear music about darkness and shadows, homicidal maniacs and victims, graveyards and wild things. Don’t think of this as a stereotypical or clichéd attempt at playing Halloween music. We’ll have tracks from Great River Radio-endorsed artists such as Neko Case, Andrew Bird, Tom Waits, Joe Henry, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, M83, Eels and Band of Horses. We’ll have local music from Roma di Luna, Trip Shakespeare and the Suburbs. And we’ll even fit in listener request segment with some of your favorites. In other words, it’s the sort of quality music you’ve come to expect from Great River Radio. You’re not going to want to miss it.

We’re live from 4-6 p.m. (CST) today via http://www.kustradio.com
Chat with us in the studio via iChat or AIM at screen name: kustradio

Next week is our annual SJAW (Social Justice Awareness Week) show. In order to maintain our club status at KUST, each semester we must devote a show to a topic or theme that has some social relevance. Our theme next week is health care. Do you have any health- or illness-related songs you would like to hear? Send us a an email or post your requests on our Website.

Playlist
Thriller Intro-Michael Jackson
Full Moon-The Black Ghosts
I hear Noises-Tegan and Sara
Things That Scare Me-Neko Case
Don’t Be Scared-Andrew Bird
My Beloved Monsters-Eels
Monster Lve-Goldfrapp
Is There A Ghost-Band of Horses
City Full of Ghosts-Mike Scott
Bruised Ghosts-Amy Millan
King’s Highway-Joe Henry
Psycho Killer-Talking Heads
Cold Blooded Old Times-Smog
Heads Will Roll-Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Skeletons-Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Shadows-Au Revoir Simone
Shadows-Gospel Gossip
The Romance of Wolves-Roma Di Luna
Rattle My Bones-Suburbs
Dry Bones-Herman Munster
Adams Family Intro
Here Come the Martian Martians-Jonathan Richman & Modern Lovers
In Germany Before The War-Randy Newman
You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth Intro-Meatloaf
Graveyard-Trip Shakespeare
Whistlin’ Past The Graveyard-Tom Waits
Pretty Girls Make Graves-The Smiths
Graveyard Girl-M83
The Unquiet Grave-Solas
All Is Love-Karen O.

I’ve just come across a new plugin developed by 224 team. It provides a Confluence macro that lets you embed a Google Wave into a Confluence wiki page. I’ve just got back from holiday, so I haven’t played around with the plugin much yet. But I’m blogging about it so that more people can try it out too. It’s cool to see this sort of development happening and even to get involved in the early stages.

A friendly warning: The plugin is pretty new, so it’s best to try it out on a test installation of Confluence.

To install the plugin:

1. Download the JAR file from the link provided on the 224 team page (at time of writing, the link is here) and save it somewhere on your computer.
2. Open Confluence in your browser and go to “Confluence Admin”.
3. Click “Plugins” in the left-hand menu.
4. Click “Browse” and find the JAR file that you saved in step 1. Select the file.
5. Click “Upload”. You should now see the “wave” plugin listed on the page, in the middle and slightly to the right of the words “Installed Plugins”.

To embed a wave onto a wiki page:

1. Create a new page or edit an existing page.
2. Add the {wave} macro, including the URL of the wave you want to embed. You can add the macro by typing the wiki markup or by using the Confluence macro browser. The format is:
   {wave:url=my.wave.url}

I decided to add my wave within a {panel} macro, to make it look a little neater. Here’s the code I used (but it’s a private wave, so you’ll need a different wave URL):

{panel}
{wave:url=https://wave.google.com/wave/#restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252BFelxosoIC.2}
{panel}

Once I’d added the wave to my Confluence page, I replied to one of the segments in the wave on the Confluence page. See the segment that starts with “I’m replying via the Confluence plugin”:

Google Wave on Confluence wiki pages

Then I had a look at the same wave in the original Google Wave client. Ta da! My reply appears there too:

Google Wave in Confluence wiki pages

So you can take part in a wave from within Confluence. Awesome. Once I’ve found a chocolate plugin, why would I ever need to leave Confluence?

The developers of the Confluence Wave plugin say that they have great plans for the plugin. They’re inviting discussion on the Confluence feature request and on the 224 wave page. If you have a Google Wave account, you can even join the 224 team wave. Fun!